Creative Communities: Arts in St. Johnsbury? Let me count the ways

Jan. 8, 2012

Written by

Jerry Aldredge

Why on earth would anyone want to make the trip to St. Johnsbury? The landscape is forlornly rural. It's almost certainly a long way from where you are right now. It's in the middle of Vermont's old-fashioned Northeast Kingdom.

But if you will take a short walk with me, within two picturesque blocks I can give you four good reasons to make the trip. There are others as well, but any one of these four should convince you.

Within these two blocks, you will find not only what is best about the cultural and social history of Vermont itself, but you will also discover some of its best hopes for enriching the lives of today's residents.

The Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium, the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum and St. Johnsbury Academy are part of the historic fabric of the town. Each one dates back to the glory days of the middle-to-late 1800s and each owes its founding and existence to one or more members of the Fairbanks family. But none of them are mere relics of the past. Each one is a practical, functioning, integral part of St. Johnsbury today.

The Fairbanks Museum opened its planetarium when the stars were still just something to wish upon. Yet today, school children from all over the Kingdom take classes in that same planetarium to learn about the latest discoveries. Then they visit the Museum's state-of-the-art "Eye in the Sky" weather laboratory. But they also make sure to see the gigantic, stuffed polar bear that is guaranteed to scare them every time they try to sneak by it.

The St. Johnsbury Athenaeum still exhibits the Fairbanks family's personal art collection, which just happens to be one of the largest and most important assemblages of Hudson River paintings in the country. But it also houses two levels of floor-to-ceiling bookcases stuffed full with two centuries of real books that local citizens actually check out regularly and a reading room stuffed full with current magazines and newspapers that scores of local citizens sit quietly reading every day. And, best of all, it smells like a library.

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Most visitors to our community who pass by St. Johnsbury Academy for the first time mistakenly think it might be a small college, with its more than a dozen classroom buildings (some of which actually pre-date its founding in 1842), beautiful greens and lawns and dormitories housing students from all over the globe. But local residents, the majority of whom received a first-class education from the private high school without having to leave home, know it for what it really is for the town — a cultural focal point of community life that still offers free public plays, concerts, lectures and art exhibits in every season of the year to those same graduates.

The fourth reason to visit, and, for me at least, the most enjoyable collaboration between the past and the present, is Catamount Arts, just half a block off the town's Main Street. The building itself, which turns 100 this year, has served as the community's Masonic Temple for that entire time without a break. But for the past three years, thanks to the generosity of the Masons themselves and the hundreds of local residents who donated funds to revitalize the imposing three-story structure, it has also been the home of Catamount's community arts center. On any given week, several of the more than 20 local organizations who meet there regularly hold luncheons, business sessions or forums while upstairs residents visit the free art gallery, take in an "Independent Lens" screening or just stop by for a cup of coffee and conversation.

There they are — four good reasons for why St. Johnsbury is a unique and worthwhile place to spend the day, or even a weekend. But if you still need one more reason to convince you to make the drive, you'll find that it's not like a trip into the past but rather an invigorating, engaging and thoroughly modern experience where the beauties of our town's history continue to house and support our community's active and vital cultural life today.

That's reason enough to make the trip. See you soon.

Jerry Aldredge has been artistic director for Catamount Arts since 2005. Before that he served as a teacher and administrator at St. Johnsbury Academy for more than 30 years.